Dale Brown - Act of War

Kelly hesitated for a moment, and then replied in a low voice, “If I were you, Tom, I’d get out of here, now, as fast as you can. Head for the train tunnel on the other side of the deep water canal—you’ll be safe there.”

“What did you fucking say?”

“I said you’d better get away from here. Leave me with the two Rambos. A kilometer should be far enough as long as you’re underground. Two would be better.”

“Better for what?”

“I like you, Tom,” Kelly said. “You’re a good guy. You always have been.”

“What are you fucking talking about, mister?”

“You’ve treated me with respect even though you’ve had your doubts about me—I like that. You should have followed your instincts, though. That just makes you a bad security officer, not a bad guy.” Kelly started to turn around.

“Don’t you move!”

“Don’t shoot me. Let me explain.” He continued to turn until they were looking into each other’s eyes. Kelly’s eyes motioned up to his left hand, and it was only then that Tom noticed he had a small device resembling a remote car door opener attached to a clump of keys in his hand. “You should order me to turn around again, Tom,” Kelly said in a low voice. “You tell the Rambos to cover me while you report this to security headquarters in person, and then you should get into that armored Suburban back there and start driving toward the tunnel on the other side of the canal. Even if you don’t make it all the way, inside that Suburban, you should be okay.” Tom started to reach for the device. “Don’t do that, Tom. I’ve already activated it. It’s a dead-man’s switch. If it leaves my hand, it’ll trigger it.”

“Trigger what?”

“You know what it is, Tom,” Kelly said. “My mission has failed, and it’s time to give it up. But I can save at least one nice guy here. TransGlobal is filled with nasty, sleazy, uncaring persons. You’re the only good guy I’ve known that works for TransGlobal. You deserve a second chance. Get as far away from here as you can. I’ll hold them off, don’t worry.” Tom raised the M-16 and aimed it at Kelly’s head. “Don’t be stupid, Tom. If you shoot, I’ll let go of it, and you’ll die. That’s foolish. Do as I say. Get away from here. You don’t owe Kingman a damned thing.”

“He’s not here. You won’t be doing a thing to him.”

“Maybe not to him, but to his company—this facility, this abomination to nature that pollutes Galveston Bay, pollutes the air, pollutes the drinking water, and enslaves workers all over the world.”

Tom lowered the rifle slightly. “What?”

“Kingman is a bloodsucker, Tom. He’ll do anything for profit. The only way to hurt him is to kill his profits.”

“Are you some kind of environmentalist wacko?”

“I am a soldier of GAMMA—the Environmental Movement Combat Alliance.” Tom’s face fell and he looked at Kelly over the sights of the M-16 with shock and surprise. “I see you’ve heard of us.”

“You blew up that dam in Paraguay recently…”

“Uruguay.”

“You killed hundreds of people…”

“TransGlobal paid almost five million dollars in bribes to government officials to get approval to build that dam,” Kelly said. “The government uprooted thousands of persons who had lived in that river valley for centuries. Hundreds of peasants, who were working for pennies a week, died during the construction—and then when they flooded the river valley, they wiped out hundreds of thousands of acres of rain forest, priceless Indian artifacts, and the graves of thousands more.”

“Where in hell did you get a nuclear weapon?”

“There are governments all over the world anxious to sell nuclear weapon components,” Kelly said casually, “and there are many socially and environmentally conscious persons willing to pay to obtain them, and even more dedicated, selfless soldiers willing to plant them in the places where they’ll do the most good—not against mindless soldiers or isolated military targets, but against the real killers of planet Earth, men like Harold Chester Kingman.”

“Is it a real bomb? Full-yield—not a dirty bomb?”

“So-called ‘dirty bombs’ are the joke of the century—they would do nothing but scare a few people, certainly not someone as devoid of conscience and morality as Kingman,” Kelly said. “No, this is a real weapon. GAMMA has sent a tape with all of the data on it, including its yield and components, in order to validate its authenticity. I notice that since the tape also warned TransGlobal Energy to evacuate the area that either no one listened to it, or Kingman did listen to it and ordered his security staff not to do anything about it. I tend to believe the latter.”

“I thought GAMMA was an environmental protection group. You’ll contaminate this entire region and kill thousands when that thing goes off.”

“Kingman dumps enough pollution in the air worldwide every day to equal a full megaton nuclear blast,” the terrorist said. “Besides, I like the irony of that…using weapons of mass destruction to punish those like TransGlobal Energy and Kingman, men who build weapons of mass eco-destruction.”

“You’re crazy. Do you know how many people you’ll kill in this area with that? Thousands…no, maybe hundreds of thousands. You’d do that just to try to hurt Kingman?”

“He’s killing thousands of people every day around the world with his harmful deep-water drilling, leaky unsafe single-hulled tankers, outdated wells and storage facilities, wanton pollution just to make more profits, and miserable working conditions that enslave entire generations of workers,” Kelly said. “I truly believe that Kingman is capable of killing the entire planet if his practices aren’t revealed to the world and shut down now. If I can shut this one plant down, it’ll really hurt him right where he lives—in the wallet. Maybe he’ll give up after that, after what I’ll do wakes up the world to his lies, corruption, and criminal activities.”

“You…you can’t do this. It’s insane…”

“Get away from here, Tom,” Kelly repeated. “It’s your last chance. Get far away from here before your cowboys get their hands on me. Tell them to stay away. I’ll give you ten minutes. That should be enough time.”

The two guards started to enter the entrapment area, but Tom raised a hand. “Stay back!” he shouted. Kelly smiled, nodded, and started to turn back toward the fence. But Tom ordered, “I’m going to take that detonator away from you, Kelly. I can see what button you’re pressing. I’ll put my finger on it, and you let it go. Don’t try to stop me.”

“Don’t try it, Tom. I’m giving you a chance. You have a wife and kids. Don’t let this chance slip away.”

“My house is less than a mile from here, man. If it goes, they’ll go too. They’re innocent. You’d be killing them and thousands of other innocent people.”

“I’m sorry to have to do that. You can call them—tell them to get belowground. Or you can go there, be with them—maybe even get them into that Suburban. At that distance, the armoring might protect them…”

“You sick bastard!”

“This is a war, Tom, and in war, innocent people are killed,” Kelly said quietly. “It’s what makes war so horrible—it’s the reason why we need to end it. This is my blow for freedom. Maybe it’ll be the beginning of the end of Harold Kingman.”

“I’m going to take it from you, Kelly,” Tom said, his voice shaking. He had to concentrate to keep from thinking about his family. Where were they? In school? No, it was Sunday…they might be safe if they went to the grocery store or…but if they went to the park, they’d be out in the open…oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…“Listen, man, you don’t have to kill thousands of people to make your point,” he went on. “Once the world finds out what you’ve done here, they’ll all want to know about your beef with Kingman and TransGlobal. That’s the best way to get your message out. If you kill thousands of people here today, you’ll be nothing but a terrorist. No one will ever listen to you.”